Are You Too Self-Critical – 12 Signs To Look For

2016-10-202016-10-18 ~ adminlife

12 Signs That You’re Being Too Self-Critical

It’s admirable to do your best and attempt to be the best person you can be. It only makes sense to examine your negative results in life and try to do better the next time. But it’s also easy to become too self-critical. A high level of self-criticism is detrimental to success and good mental health. Excessive self-criticism hurts your self-esteem and confidence.

Consider these signs that you might be too critical of yourself:

You’re paralyzed. One sign that you’re overly critical toward yourself is a lack of action. If you’ve been stuck in the same situation for an extended period of time, you’re too hard on yourself. Otherwise, you’d be out there taking care of business and making positive changes to your life.
You’re slow to forgive others. When you can’t forgive yourself, you’re unable to forgive others. When you can let go and forgive yourself, you can do the same for the other people in your life.
You’re never pleased with your accomplishments. It doesn’t matter to you that you shaved 10 minutes off your best 10K time or graduated from medical school. You’re bothered by the fact that you didn’t win the race or attend Harvard medical school.
You’re not assertive. You have to be comfortable with yourself to feel comfortable with asserting yourself. Assertiveness also brings the risk of rejection. Being too self-critical can increase the fear of rejection from others.
You consistently say bad things to yourself. There’s little harm in a small amount of negative self-talk. But a constant barrage of self-criticism is highly damaging. Imagine telling your child that they can’t do anything right and should give up trying. It sounds crazy when viewed from that perspective.
You’re a chronic underachiever. Underachieving is both a symptom and a cause of self-criticism. Consistent underachieving is a call to action!
Others feel comfortable being critical of you. The average person isn’t comfortable criticizing others. However, after they’ve heard you criticize yourself repeatedly, they’re likely to feel they can join in on the criticism.
You criticize yourself in general terms, rather than just for specific events. There’s a difference between telling yourself that you’re not a good tennis player and telling yourself that you’re not good at anything. General criticism is false and highly damaging.

A lack of success at a particular activity doesn’t make you flawed at everything. It’s illogical.

You keep your opinions to yourself. While you have every reason to avoid telling your neighbor she looks fat in her dress, you should feel comfortable sharing the title of your favorite book. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing your opinions freely, you’re too concerned about being judged by others or saying the wrong thing.
You spend too much time dwelling on your mistakes. Can you move on quickly after a short period of self-reflection or do you dwell on your mistakes for an extended period of time?
You find yourself unable to ask for help. It shouldn’t be difficult to ask for help. In fact, the more help the better! Are you afraid of being viewed as incapable? If so, you’re too critical of yourself.
You can’t give yourself a single compliment. Everyone is good at something. Or maybe you know you’re good at a few things but don’t think you deserve a compliment. Either way, you’re being too hard on yourself.

You’re sabotaging yourself by being overly self-critical. You limit both your success and your mood. Realize how much you harm yourself with self-criticism. Learn from your mistakes and apply the information with enthusiasm.

To your success

Michael W

Enhance Yourself – 14 Methods

2016-09-162016-09-14 ~ adminlife

14 Practical Ways to Enhance Yourself

You probably worry about improving your finances and your landscaping, but do you ever give time and attention to improving yourself? Are you as knowledgeable, capable, and healthy as you can possibly be? Time spent on self-development is never wasted. Since time is limited, it’s essential that you spend that time wisely.

Enhance yourself and live a life you love:

Try a new hobby. Try something outside your normal scope of activities. Join a ping-pong league or learn how to paint with water colors. Stretch yourself beyond your current boundaries.
Contribute to your community. Consider volunteering a few hours of your time each week. You’ll help others, feel good about yourself, and make new friends.
Get at least seven hours of sleep. Science has shown that everyone performs better after seven hours of sleep than they do on less. Create evening routines that contribute to sound sleep and get to bed at a reasonable time each night.
Take on one of your fears. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a fear of clowns, spiders, public speaking, or heights. Get a book on phobias and try to help yourself. Get professional help if necessary. Conquering one fear can bring you a new confidence that forges through anything.
Read something new each day. Reading is convenient, useful, and economical. There’s little that can’t be learned from reading. Schedule your reading time and develop a reading list. Most importantly, make an effort to apply what you learn. Knowledge is useless if unused.
Learn a new language. You could be practical and learn Spanish or attempt something more exotic like Japanese or Persian. People that know more than one language are fascinating. There are many free language exchanges available online. You can help someone learn English while they’re teaching you French.
Use your artistic talents. Make time for writing, photography, music, painting, or other artistic pursuit. Even if you believe you have zero artistic ability, it’s still worth the time. What form of art interests you the most?
Create a new habit that supports the life you desire. It might be eating a healthy breakfast or going for a walk after work. Maybe you want to read or meditate for 15 minutes each day. Focus on one habit and make it permanent.
Make a new friend. You can never have too many friends, but your life rarely changes when you hang around the same people every day. Find a new friend outside of your normal circle of people.
Take a class. Learn something new from an expert and surround yourself with like-minded people. You’ll broaden your horizons and increase the size of your social circle.
Start a blog. Share your experiences and expertise with others. You might even make a second career out of it.
Get in shape. Make small improvements to your diet and exercise habits and finally get the body and confidence that you deserve.
Learn how to meditate. Mindfulness and meditation are all the rage. There are many benefits, both physical and psychological, for those that meditate regularly.
Take a trip to someplace new. Why are you waiting to take that trip of a lifetime? Time is ticking away. Get online and book a trip today.

Self-development can be fun! Increasing your capabilities doesn’t have to be like studying for a calculus test. It’s as much about having experiences as it is about gaining knowledge. Give yourself the attention you deserve. The more life skills and talents you develop, the more you’ll be able to appreciate and enjoy everything life has to offer.

To your success

Michael W

Eliminate Negative Self Image – 9 Strategies

2016-09-092016-09-07 ~ adminlife

Proven Strategies to Eliminate a Negative Self-Image

Your self-image is your perception of yourself. You might think of yourself as intelligent, lazy, bad with money, likeable, and eccentric. Your beliefs about yourself can be liberating or constricting.

Your self-image can influence your decisions and limit your ability to succeed. For example, if you believe that you’re bad at speaking with strangers, you may avoid social situations that include people you don’t know. As a result, you might miss out on your biggest opportunity to meet the love of your life, a recruiter for your dream job, or a life-long friend.

Change your self-image and enhance your life with these techniques:

Address your bad habits. No one is perfect. If you’re being completely honest, there are things about you that could use a little work. Shore up your shortcomings. Get in shape, practice being more patient, or be a better friend.

Focus on making progress. Perfection is an unreasonable goal.

Make a list of your good points. Do this in the morning and the evening. Make a long list and then add at least one item each morning and evening. Remind yourself of all the things you’re already good at. What do you appreciate about yourself? Review the list regularly and notice how good you feel.
Live by your morals. You have your own opinion about what’s right and wrong. If you can live according to your values, how can you feel bad about yourself? It’s only when we stray that we feel guilty or displeased with ourselves.

Make a list of the behaviors you’ll no longer accept from yourself.
How do you think a person should behave? What qualities are most important to you? Set standards for yourself that you refuse to violate.

Spend time each week helping others. Volunteer or help a neighbor. Do something for someone else without receiving anything in return. Your self-image will improve considerably by this one strategy alone.

There are websites that list the volunteer opportunities in every city. Find your community’s listings and make a positive difference in someone’s life. You’ll benefit as much as they do.

Experience success. You have the right to feel good about any success, so make it easy to succeed. Set small goals and accomplish them. It could be a goal to save $100 this month or make it to the gym three times this week. Show yourself that you can be successful consistently.
Spend time with those that think highly of you. A great way to increase your respect for yourself is to spend time with others who already think you’re great. Avoid those that are negative, unkind, or unsupportive.
Spend time on activities that you enjoy. Make yourself feel good on a regular basis. You can carry those good feelings with you into other parts of your life. The more time you’re able to spend feeling positive emotions, the better you’ll feel about yourself.
Let go of the need to be perfect. If being perfect is the only way you can feel good about yourself, you’re going to be unhappy most of the time. Perfection isn’t possible. Be interested in improvement and effort. These are controllable and achievable.
Treat yourself well. By treating yourself well, you’ll believe that you deserve it. Be as kind to yourself as you would a good friend. Take care of your needs. This includes eating well, getting enough sleep, having an active social life, and buying yourself the things you need.

Do you think highly of yourself? A negative self-image can have negative repercussions on every part of your life. It’s well worth the time to enhance your self-image. You’ll find it difficult to achieve more than you think you deserve. So believe that you deserve a lot and you’ll enjoy more of what you desire in life.

To your success

Michael W

Boost Your Self-Image To Improve Your Life

2016-09-01 ~ adminlife

Boosting Self-Image

There’s a lot you can accomplish by having a positive self-image. Your confidence will increase which means that you can deal with more situations. People will respond to your increased self-image in a positive way as well.

The first step to increasing your self-image is to know yourself. You need to understand your capabilities and skills. You also want to determine weaknesses to improve upon. But don’t beat yourself up too much when identifying these. Weaknesses can easily be turned into strengths if you work at them long enough.

Determine what aspects about you are important to change and concentrate on those. There may be aspects that you are not that concerned with and won’t have much effect on your self-image. Ignore those. You can’t and shouldn’t change every aspect of yourself. Sometimes, you should just accept those aspects of your personality and move on.

You need to be willing to change. If you don’t feel good about yourself, you have to make changes to turn that around. Change is never easy, but when it comes to increasing your self-image, you will see that it’s worth the effort.

You can seek out an image consultant to help if you are struggling with doing this yourself. An image consultant is trained in helping people increase their self-image. It can be humbling to hear what the consultant advises but this is part of the process, and you should embrace it. Don’t be afraid to spend some money for a decent consultant. The results they provide will pay for itself.

Keep in mind that no matter what kind of help you get, this is your journey or change. Don’t worry about what others may believe and stop comparing yourself to other people. They don’t have to live your life. You are the one that has to live with the consequences of your new image, both good and bad. Although, try to emphasize only the good whenever possible.

When your self-image improves, just about every aspect of your life will follow. You will have better relationships at home and at work, and you will have a positive attitude. Tasks will seem less challenging partly because people will be more willing to pitch in to help you accomplish them. They will feed off your positive energy and want to be around you more often. This may open opportunities for you that you never thought you would have at your disposal.

To your success

Michael W